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It happened just last week, but it seems that the municipal election is all but a memory – and that’s probably because of the finality of the results which show that - in all but one municipality - it wasn’t even close. And while it was a disappointing result for the PUP, most seasoned observers agree, that sort of thing is to be expected when a party is rebuilding from it worst loss ever.

But is it rebuilding really? Or is Belize’s grand old party backsliding into a political abyss? We’ve been having a closer look at the results – and it shows John Briceno’s PUP losing critical ground in key areas.

First, in Belize City, the PUP gained only a marginal .2 percentage points between the municipal election of 2006 and 2009.

• That’s a gain of maybe 100 voters, nothing really, but more importantly, the results show the party losing ground in the city since the general election, a full two percentage points – in a year of governance when the UDP has definitely not become more popular.
• Also notable is that the PUP city slate was unable to energize the electorate or harness anti government sentiment – even with all the Moya scandals: in 2009 almost fourteen thousand fewer voters came out to support the PUP in Belize City than did in 2006.

And the results were worse in the Capital City, where the PUP was relegated to third party status, garnering only 22.1% of the votes, compared to the VIP’s 22.3%. A stunning result for the City that George Price built.

In the Santa Elena and San Ignacio, the PUP also flirted with third.

• Though there was no third party putting up a slate in the twin town – there was a strong independent candidate running for Mayor, former UDP Mayor, Alfonso Ponchis Cruz and he got 263 more votes than the PUP candidate for Mayor, who came in third.
• And the total percentage of support for the PUP slate in that town was also down more than 15% from 2006.

And while that San Ignacio swing was among the greatest in last week’s election, look a little further west, and you’ll see that the PUP has all but faded away.

• In Benque Viejo Town, the PUP’s support in 2006 was a close 48%; it fell dramatically by 25 percentage points to 23%.

And while the far west was rough for the PUP, the deep south was also deeply disappointing.

• The PUP also experienced a precipitous slide in Punta Gorda Town where they got 46.35% of the vote in 2006 compared to 37.85% in 2009 – while also losing the mayorship and a councillor’s seat.
• In Dangriga the PUP did gain slightly between 2006 and 2009, but again lost ground from the 41% support it had in the 2008 election.

And in San Pedro, the island is anything but a paradise for the PUP where the party got 40.95% of the vote in 2006;

• that slipped to 36% in the general and then went down further to 34% in the municipal. We note that the division Belize Rural South includes Caye Caulker, but the town does not.

And that schism between divisions and town limits also slightly muddles the picture in Orange Walk – the home base of the PUP party leader – where his area, Orange Walk Central combines with Orange Walk East to form the town’s voting population.

• The numbers show that the PUP did gain a shade shy of four percentage points between 2006 and 2009 – good enough, but still not enough to gain control of the town council, particularly when anti government sentiment in that town should have been at a fever pitch fuelled by the sugar riots which happened just weeks earlier and were much dramatized on Briceno’s radio and television outlets.

But even if Briceno takes some slender consolation in the three councillor seats the PUP did win in Orange Walk, the overall picture is very discouraging: The PUP has fallen from 54.7% of the popular vote in the Municipal Elections in 2003, to 39.9% in 2006 and now to 37% in 2009.  Now if in 2006, Said Musa was at the height of his unpopularity and the voters wanted to send him and the PUP a clear message, what does 2009 mean for Briceno?

And if you look at the result of the election in the 21 divisions that cover towns –with note made of the discrepancy that is created by those few villages that fall outside the towns – the PUP’s support went from 40.1% in the General election to 37% in this election. And that opens up to what may be the most remarkable statistic: since 1961, no party had gotten more than 60% of the popular vote; last week Wednesday, the UDP got 60.7%.

And that kind of dominance at the polls has stirred a collective shudder within the PUP which must now confront the very real prospect of sliding into a long night of defeat. For Belize’s winningest party, this has caused consternation at the highest levels, and there is talk of two things, possible rapprochement between the old and new guards and the possibility of a leadership challenge.

In this regard, Godfrey Smith, the defeated campaign manager for leader-aspirant Francis Fonseca in the 2008 special convention today predicted in his online column Flashpoint (click for full column) that the seeds for quote, “a full-blown leadership challenge” are already being sown. In this regard, it is of note that at today’s pre-debate parliamentary caucus for the PUP, we are reliably informed that neither deputy Mark Espat nor Cordel Hyde were present.